everquestfandomcom-20200214-history
Weighted axe gambit
A weighted axe gambit is an opening combat maneuver available to any class capable of two handing. It enables a charater to begin a fight by inflicting a massive swing with a slow two-handed weapon before using the bandolier to switch immediately to a setup of faster weaponry that offers better sustained DPS. The faster weapons will then commence autoattacking at their normal pace as soon as their own short delay timers have elapsed, allowing the character to effectively bypass the slow weapon's delay for that single initial swing. The gambit is named for the Weighted Axe, a very old (Ruins of Kunark) weapon with high damage for its era but an absurd weapon delay of 150 (fifteen seconds between swings if not hasted), whose only practical use for DPS comes from this trick, riposte damage, and jousting techniques. Why it Works A weighted axe gambit works because weapon delay in EverQuest is retroactively calculated. In other words, what the Weighted Axe's 150 delay stat actually means is, "This weapon will not swing until 15 seconds have passed since your last weapon swing - regardless of what weapon that previous swing was actually made with." The same holds true for a much faster 20 delay weapon, which says, "This weapon will not swing until 2 seconds have passed since your last weapon swing - regardless of what weapon that swing was actually made with." Because of this, it is entirely possible to swing a 150 delay weighted axe to begin a fight and then switch to a fast weapon like a dagger without any noticeable slowdown in autoattack rate. Note however that the reverse of this gambit is also true: swinging a fast dagger and then switching immediately to a slow two-hander will result in the two-hander not swinging at all until the two-hander's full delay has elapsed. This is why the gambit must be performed with the slow weapon first, and not the other way around. Sample Hotkey A multi-line social hotkey can be constructed to perform all of the actions necessary for a weighted axe gambit. First, however, creating two weapon sets in the bandolier is necessary: one for the gambit weapon and one for the charaer's normal DPS weaponry. These weapon sets can have any name, but the sample hotkey text below will assume they are named "2HGambit" and "Normal." Sample hotkey text: /bandolier activate 2HGambit /attack on /bandolier activate Normal This leaves room for two additional lines, which can be used to include /doability, /alt activate, or /discipline commands for use at the moment one's character starts attacking. No pauses should be necessary under normal latency. Troubleshooting If the gambit weapon is not actually swinging with the above hotkey, one of the following is usually the culprit: *The character is not technically in melee range at the time of activating the gambit hotkey. *The character used a ranged attack before running into melee range to perform the gambit. Ranged attacks cause the character's weapon delay timer to fire, just like swinging the fast dagger in the "Why It Works" example above. For weapons with extremely high delay (like the actual Weighted Axe) this will prevent the gambit from working. To get around this, use a combat ability like Throw Stone to tag the mob instead, as doing so will not trigger weapon delay. *The character was recently fighting, and not enough time passed between the two battles for the gambit weapon's delay to elapse. In a fast-paced dungeon crawling situation like a Lost Dungeons of Norrath adventure, this restriction can make using a faster two-hander more preferable as the gambit weapon than it would usually be. *The weapon set names typed into the hotkey do not match the actual weapon set names in the bandolier. List of Weapons Commonly Used in Weighted Axe Gambits Most of these also work well as autoriposte weapons. *Weighted Axe, looted from giants in Frontier Mountains, Burning Woods, or Dreadlands. 45 damage, 150 delay, no level req or rec, can be traded. Usable by a warrior shadow knight, or berserker. *Dathor Great Hammer, looted from Shak Dathor Warlord in Umbral Plains. 74 damage, 95 delay, no level req or rec, can be traded. Usable by all classes EXCEPT bard, rogue, necromancer, wizard, magician, or enchanter. *In general, any high-damage, high-delay two-hander can be used to gain at least a marginal amount of DPS at the start of a fight using this trick.